Chrysopogon Zizanioides is a non-invasive clump grass native to southern India and can be found in most countries around the world. It is also known as Sunshine Grass and, more commonly, as Vetiver Grass.
When fully grown, Vetiver Grass has a root system that grows mostly in a downward direction for several meters, which has significant structural properties. This makes Vetiver Grass useful as a biological erosion control solution, protecting soils from wind, water and other dynamic erosive agents. Moreover, its dense above-ground clumps create a hedge barrier that prohibits runoff sediment from entering watersheds and riparian areas. Still further, roots and leaves of Vetiver Grass exhibit a phytoremediation property whereby the Vetiver Grass absorbs significant amounts of nitrates, phosphates, heavy metals and other contaminates out of water and soils. Vetiver Grass has even been shown to reduce biological contaminates such as e-coli. Because of its many beneficial properties, Vetiver Grass, therefore, has been used worldwide as a biological environmental solution for erosion and contamination mitigation and remediation.
A further advantage of Vetiver Grass is its high cellulosic content, which includes a significant percentage of fermentable sugars. Vetiver Grass also has a high xylan content, when extracted and processed, becomes Xylitol which is a natural sugar substitute for diabetics.
With its decades-long lifespan and rapid regeneration cycles, Vetiver Grass may be an ideal biomass for energy production. Its ability to inhibit parasite growth in livestock has been established, but only utilized in the early growth stages of the plant, prior to the development of thick, sharp ridges on the leaf making it difficult for livestock to consume.
Unfortunately, Vetiver Grass is non-invasive and does not propagate by seeds. Therefore, Vetiver Grass is cultivated by manually harvesting and dissecting existing plants into single or multiple stems known as “slips” or “shoots.” The stems are cut out between the roots and the leaf then typically planted by hand. These manual processes are sometimes augmented by simple tools such as a shovel and a machete, common hand tools, or even a farm tractor. However, the manual process of harvesting and preparing Vetiver stems for transplantation is time consuming and labor intensive. Likewise, the process of manually or mechanically assisted planting is time consuming and labor intensive.
Vetiver Grass for use as a biological solution for such things as erosion control and water contamination mitigation and remediation has been limited to impoverished countries where the indigenous low cost of labor for the manual propagation and transplantation of Vetiver Grass is conducive to implementation. Specifically, lack of funding, expertise and resources in impoverished countries inhibit utilization of modern, more expensive, institutional-level mechanical and chemical mitigation and remediation techniques, such as water treatment facilities and mechanical erosion control structures, as typically found in well-developed industrialized nations. On the other hand, adequate funding, skills and other resources in well-developed, industrialized nations like the United States has driven environmental solutions toward more expensive, institutional-level, mechanical and chemical mitigation and remediation techniques. Also, unlike impoverished nations, more industrialized countries have a tendency toward technology and away from the high cost of manual labor, and there has been little incentive for those countries to develop efficient utilizations of biological environmental solutions like Vetiver Grass.
What are needed in the industry are systems and methods that reduce or recoup the long term investment costs of planting, cultivating and harvesting Vetiver Grass.